The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[2477] f. 139. Khwāja Kalān himself had taken from Hindūstān the money for repairing this dam.

[2478]sāpqūn ālīp; the 2nd Pers. trs. as if from sātqūn ālīp, kharīda, purchasing.

[2479]naz̤ar-gāh, perhaps, theatre, as showing the play enacted at the ford. Cf. ff. 137, 236, 248b. Tūtūn-dara will be Masson’s Tūtām-dara. Erskine locates Tūtūn-dara some 8 kos (16 m.) n. w. of Hūpīān (Ūpīān). Masson shews that it was a charming place (Journeys in Biluchistan, Afghanistan and the Panj-āb, vol. iii, cap. vi and vii).

[2480]jībachī. Bābur’s injunction seems to refer to the maintaining of the corps and the manufacture of armour rather than to care for the individual men involved.

[2481] Either the armies in Nīl-āb, or the women in the Kābul-country (f. 375).

[2482] Perhaps what Bābur means is, that both what he had said to ‘Abdu’l-lāh and what the quatrain expresses, are dissuasive from repentance. Erskine writes (Mems. p. 403) but without textual warrant, “I had resolution enough to persevere”; de Courteille (Mems. ii, 390), “Voici un quatrain qui exprime au juste les difficultés de ma position.”

[2483] The surface retort seems connected with the jacket, perhaps with a request for the gift of it.

[2484] Clearly what recalled this joke of Banāī’s long-silent, caustic tongue was that its point lay ostensibly in a baffled wish—in ‘Alī-sher’s professed desire to be generous and a professed impediment, which linked in thought with Bābur’s desire for wine, baffled by his abjuration. So much Banāī’s smart verbal retort shows, but beneath this is the double-entendre which cuts at the Beg as miserly and as physically impotent, a defect which gave point to another jeer at his expense, one chronicled by Sām Mīrzā and translated in Hammer-Purgstall’s Geschichte von schönen Redekünste Persiens, art. CLV. (Cf. f. 179-80.)—The word mādagī is used metaphorically for a button-hole; like nā-mardī, it carries secondary meanings, miserliness, impotence, etc. (Cf. Wollaston’s English-Persian Dictionary s.n. button-hole, where only we have found mādagī with this sense.)

[2485] The 1st Pers. trs. expresses “all these jokes”, thus including with the double-meanings of mādagī, the jests of the quatrain.

[2486] The 1st Pers. trs. fills out Bābur’s allusive phrase here with “of the Wālidiyyah”. His wording allows the inference that what he versified was a prose Turkī translation of a probably Arabic original.

[2487] Erskine comments here on the non-translation into Persian of Bābur’s letters. Many MSS., however, contain a translation (f. 348, p. 624, n. 2 and E.’s n. f. 377b).

[2488] Anglicé, Thursday after 6 p.m.

[2489] What would suit measurement on maps and also Bābur’s route is “Jumoheen” which is marked where the Sarāī Bāburpūr-Atsu-Phaphand road turns south, east of Phaphand (I.S. Map of 1900, Sheet 68).

[2490] var. Qabāq, Qatāk, Qanāk, to each of which a meaning might be attached. Bābur had written to Humāyūn about the frontier affair, as one touching the desired peace (f. 359).

[2491] This will refer to the late arrival in Āgra of the envoy named, who was not with his younger brother at the feast of f. 351b (f. 357, p. 641, n. 2).—As to T̤ahmāsp’s style, see f. 354, f. 358.

[2492] Shāh-qulī may be the ill-informed narrator of f. 354.

[2493] Both are marked on the southward road from Jumoheen (Jumandnā?) for Auraiya.

[2494] The old Kālpī pargana having been sub-divided, Dīrapūr is now in the district of Cawnpore (Kānhpūr).

[2495] That this operation was not hair-cutting but head-shaving is shewn by the verbs T. qīrmāq and its Pers. trs. tarāsh kardan. To shave the head frequently is common in Central Asia.

[2496] This will be Chaparghatta on the Dīrapūr-Bhognīpūr-Chaparghatta-Mūsanagar road, the affixes kada and ghatta both meaning house, temple, etc.

[2497] Māhīm, and with her the child Gul-badan, came in advance of the main body of women. Bābur seems to refer again to her assumption of royal style by calling her Walī, Governor (f. 369 and n.). It is unusual that no march or halt is recorded on this day.

[2498] or, Ārampūr. We have not succeeded in finding this place; it seems to have been on the west bank of the Jumna, since twice Bābur when on the east bank, writes of coming opposite to it (supra and f. 379). If no move was made on Tuesday, Jumāda II. 6th (cf. last note), the distance entered as done on Wednesday would locate the halting-place somewhere near the Akbarpūr of later name, which stands on a road and at a ferry. But if the army did a stage on Tuesday, of which Bābur omits mention, Wednesday’s march might well bring him opposite to Hamirpūr and to the “Rampur”-ferry. The verbal approximation of Ārampūr and “Rampur” arrests attention.—Local encroachment by the river, which is recorded in the District Gazetteers, may have something to do with the disappearance from these most useful books and from maps, of pargana Ādampūr (or, Ārampūr).

[2499]tūshlāb. It suits best here, since solitude is the speciality of the excursion, to read tūshmāk as meaning to take the road, Fr. cheminer.

[2500]da‘wī bīla; Mems. p. 404, challenge; Méms. ii, 391, il avait fait des façons, a truth probably, but one inferred only.

[2501] This will be more to the south than Kūra Khaṣ, the headquarters of the large district; perhaps it is “Koora Khera” (? Kūra-khirāj) which suits the route (I.S. Map, Sheet 88).

[2502] Perhaps Kunda Kanak, known also as “Kuria, Koria, Kura and Kunra Kanak” (D.G. of Fatḥpūr).

[2503] Haswa or Hanswa. The conjoint name represents two villages some 6m. apart, and is today that of their railway-station.

[2504] almost due east of Fatḥpūr, on the old King’s Highway (Bādshāhī Sar-rāh).

[2505] His ancestors had ruled in Jūnpūr from 1394 to 1476 AD., his father Ḥusain Shāh having been conquered by Sl. Sikandar Lūdī at the latter date. He was one of three rivals for supremacy in the East (Sharq), the others being Jalālu’d-dīn Nūhānī and Maḥmūd Lūdī,—Afghāns all three. Cf. Erskine’s History of India, Bābur, i, 501.

[2506] This name appears on the I.S. Map, Sheet 88, but too far north to suit Bābur’s distances, and also off the Sarāī Munda-Kusār-Karrah road. The position of Naubasta suits better.

[2507] Sher Khān was associated with Dūdū Bībī in the charge of her son’s affairs. Bābur’s favours to him, his son Humāyūn’s future conqueror, will have been done during the Eastern campaign in 934 AH., of which so much record is missing. Cf. Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhī, E. & D.’s History of India, iv, 301 et seq. for particulars of Sher Khān (Farīd Khān Sūr Afghān).

[2508] In writing “SL. MAḤMŪD”, Bābur is reporting his informant’s style, he himself calling Maḥmūd “Khān” only (f. 363 and f. 363b).

[2509] This will be the more northerly of two Kusārs marked as in Karrah; even so, it is a very long 6 kurohs (12m.) from the Dugdugī of the I.S. Map (cf. n. supra).

[2510]bīr pāra āsh u ta‘ām, words which suggest one of those complete meals served, each item on its separate small dish, and all dishes fitting like mosaic into one tray. T. āsh is cooked meat (f. 2 n. 1 and f. 343b); Ar. ta‘ām will be sweets, fruit, bread, perhaps rice also.

[2511] The yaktāī, one-fold coat, contrasts with the dū-tāhī, two-fold (A.-i-A. Bib. Ind. ed., p. 101, and Blochmann’s trs. p. 88).

[2512] This acknowledgement of right to the style Sult̤ān recognized also supremacy of the Sharqī claim to rule over that of the Nūḥānī and Lūdī competitors.

[2513]mīndīn bītī tūrgān waqāī'. This passage Teufel used to support his view that Bābur’s title for his book was Waqāī‘, and not Bābur-nāma which, indeed, Teufel describes as the Kazaner Ausgabe adoptirte Titel. Bābur-nāma, however, is the title [or perhaps, merely scribe’s name] associated both with Kehr’s text and with the Ḥaidarābād Codex.—I have found no indication of the selection by Bābur of any title; he makes no mention of the matter and where he uses the word waqāī‘ or its congeners, it can be read as a common noun. In his colophon to the Rāmpūr Dīwān, it is a parallel of ash‘ār, poems. Judging from what is found in the Mubīn, it may be right to infer that, if he had lived to complete his book—now broken off s.a. 914 AH. (f. 216b)—he would have been explicit as to its title, perhaps also as to his grounds for choosing it. Such grounds would have found fitting mention in a preface to the now abrupt opening of the Bābur-nāma (f. 1b), and if the Malfūzāt-i-tīmūrī be Tīmūr’s authentic autobiography, this book might have been named as an ancestral example influencing Bābur to write his own. Nothing against the authenticity of the Malfūzāt can be inferred from the circumstance that Bābur does not name it, because the preface in which such mention would be in harmony with e.g. his Walidiyyah preface, was never written. It might accredit the Malfūzāt to collate passages having common topics, as they appear in the Bābur-nāma, Malfūzāt-i-tīmūrī and Z̤afar-nāma (cf. E. & D.’s H. of I. iv, 559 for a discussion by Dr. Sachau and Prof. Dowson on the Malfūzāt). (Cf.

Z.D.M. xxxvii, p. 184, Teufel’s art. Bābur und Abū’l-faẓl; Smirnow’s Cat. of Manuscrits Turcs, p. 142; Index in loco s.nn. Mubīn and Title.)

[2514] Koh-khirāj, Revenue-paying Koh (H. G. Nevill’s D. G. of Allāhābād, p. 261).

[2515]kīma aīchīdā, which suggests a boat with a cabin, a bajrā (Hobson-Jobson s.n. budgerow).